Numerical Study of Three-Dimensional Flow within a Cubic Cavity

Abstract

A finite-difference solution of the unsteady Navier-Stokes equations by the explicit use of the pressure and the velocity is presented. The aims are to test the scheme and to estimate the three-dimensional effect of the side walls. A 20×20×20 grid is used and the Reynolds numbers are 0, 100 and 400. The scheme works well except that it needs a very large amount of computation time. It is shown that the effect of the side walls is restricted to a relatively thin layer and the central part of the cavity is almost two-dimensional.